A Midsummer Night's Steampunk

by Scott E. Tarbet

  Pauline blinked, trying to take it all in. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but her foggy brain couldn’t quite work out what that question might be.

  “Your father was also of one of the minor Prussian houses. A brilliant and wonderful man, your father. I am saddened to hear what happened last night.”

  Pauline swallowed hard, on the verge of weeping again. “Thank you.”

  “You are probably wondering why I am telling you all this now, when you have been through so much, and are so gravely injured.”

  “I did wonder about that.”

  “It is important because you need to know the truth about your own identity before you continue with any commitments you are contemplating with this . . .” she pointed at Alex. “. . . this filthy, bedraggled, unkempt, ill-mannered . . .”

  Alex burst out laughing. “Fine, Mother, fine! I’ll take a bath!”

  “Good boy, Wally! I’ve already given instructions that a bath be drawn and a fresh uniform laid out in your cabin.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Pauline twisted in his arms to search his face, mouth agape.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “This is your mamma? You weren’t just crazy, telling us you are really Prince Waldemar von Hohenzollern? It wasn’t just a bump on the head?”

  “No concussion. It’s really me. But please don’t call me Wally. I hate that nickname.”

  Vicky sniffed. “When he was eleven and was in bed for months with diphtheria, he decided he was too big for his mamma’s pet name for him. To this day, his grandmamma calls him the same thing. Her, he can’t refuse.”

  “She’s old,” explained Alex.

  “Your grandmamma . . .?” asked Pauline.

  “Queen Victoria.”

  “So the crocodile story . . .” All of this was rapidly becoming overwhelming, and she fought the urge to doze again.

  “Yes, I let my crocodile loose in Queen Victoria’s study. Gave her quite a start.”

  “Why say your name is Alex MacIntyre?”

  “I was visiting Grandmamma incognito on a break from university. It was wonderful! I was able to walk about the streets of London without being recognized, without fear of some Hanoverian hothead—my apologies, Mother—taking a potshot at me. One day, I wandered into a charming little shop to browse the automatons. The girl behind the counter melted my heart. I arranged to stay, confidentially of course, for ‘on-the-job training’ with Grandmamma.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

  “Would you have believed me? And even if you had, what would you have said when I asked you to walk in the park with me?”

  “Well . . . you have a point. Even if I had believed you, I would have thought you a royal rogue. I’d have refused.”

  “So you see—”

  She reached up and kissed him. “You are a rogue, you know.” He returned her kiss.

  “Now, now, child,” chided Vicky. “Hardly proper behavior in the presence of one’s prospective mother-in-law.”

  Pauline was surprised, after all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, to feel herself blush crimson. She hid her burning face in the prince’s shirtfront.

  “I think I shall call you Alex forever,” she murmured after a moment. Was it the morphine that made her mind wander so, or being in Alex’s arms?

  “Better than Wally,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “Please call me Alex forever and ever.”

  Lakshmi turned to Winston. “Please tell me Jubal’s carrying case made it aboard.”

  “Indeed it did, Doctor. Starveling pulled it on the brick cart all night long. A right handy platform for carrying the wounded, it turned out to be.”

  “Then it is fitting that he be the first to see why it is so important. Would you please call him?”

  “He’s just outside on the deck, Doctor. Robin, would you step in here, please?”

  “Shaka, I need the automaton,” Lakshmi said in a conversational tone.

  “Yes, Doctor. He’s right here. Fully wound.” Shaka stood just outside the cabin door, awaiting Lakshmi’s needs. How long he had been there, only she knew.

  Winston let out a startled grunt. “Crikey, Shaka! For a lad seven feet tall and weighing half a tonne, you move like a cat!”

  “Superior engineering, sir,” Shaka replied as he ducked into the cabin and placed the automaton on the divan next to Pauline and Alex. Winston carried the case to Lakshmi, and with a few deft clicks, she extracted the small red velvet bag and poured huge rubies from it. Quickly but precisely, she swapped the rubies into Jubal in place of the blue diamonds.

  “Only Shaka can wind the automaton?” Winston asked as she checked and double-checked the jewels’ alignment.

  “When I am at home in my own laboratory, I have a large steam-driven winding driver which winds Jubal . . . and similar mechanisms. Large energy discharges require large amounts of stored energy. Multiple extremely heavy-duty springs are the only way to do it. Fortunately, Shaka is strong enough to wind the mechanism tight enough to get the job done. The steam driver winds even tighter.”

  Bottom appeared, showing Flute the way, Starveling following with a hand on his shoulder.

  “How goes it, lad?” Winston asked Starveling.

  “Fine as can be, sir, except me eyes, sir. Useless, they are. Fully blind now, I am. Francis says the sun is coming up. Still nothing but shadows for me.”

  “We’ll soon see about that,” Lakshmi said. Starveling turned his face in her direction.

  “Robin, this fine lady is Doctor Lakshmi Malieux,” said Bottom. “The one I’ve been telling you about. The great doctor who fixes eyes.”

  “And brains,” added Alex.

  Lakshmi took Jubal in her arms and stood in front of Starveling, who stood man-height on his wheels. “Now Robin, I want to you look directly at the sound of my voice. Try not to blink or move. The rest of you, close your eyes a moment.”

  Everyone did as requested, and a red flash filled the compartment.

  “You may all open your eyes,” Lakshmi announced.

  “That’s all there is to it?” asked Winston.

  “That’s it. Robin, how do you feel? How are your eyes?”

  “I . . . well . . . strange to tell, Doctor,” he said, blinking furiously. “They’re better! I can see shapes and lights again.” Robin spun excitedly, peering about, his wheels whirring.

  Lakshmi smiled. “It will get progressively better over the next several days. In the end, you will be able to see as well as you ever did. But it will take your eyes and your brain a few days to remember how.”

  “That’s a regular marvel, that is! Thank you, Doctor! Thank you more than I can say. What do I owe you? I’ll pay the rest of my life.”

  Lakshmi smiled. “Just be my Friend.”

  Starveling smiled shyly. “I would like that very much.”

  “Being Doctor Lakshmi’s Friend is a very great thing indeed,” said Bottom. “It has been like a midsummer night’s dream for me, these last glorious hours. I’ll ask Peter Quince to write one of his bully ballads about our adventures to sing at the end of our play for Queen Victoria!”

  “Mamma will enjoy that very much,” Vicky said. “I know I shall.”

  ToC

  Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,

  And Phœbus ’gins arise,

  His steeds to water at those springs

  On chaliced flowers that lies;

  And winking Mary-buds begin

  To ope their golden eyes;

  With every thing that pretty bin,

  My lady sweet, arise;

  Arise, arise.

  —Hark! Hark! The Lark, by William Shakespeare

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Those Endearing Young Charms

  “It would have been ideal if we had Oberon Malieux to perform Pauline’s surgery,” Lakshmi said pensively. Arm in arm, she and Vicky strolled the Kaiseradler’s deck in the
mid-morning sunshine. “There is no surgeon in the world better with legs.”

  “Not even yourself?”

  “Hah! No. Even the naval surgeons from the Hohenzollern II and the Kaiseradler are far better trained for injuries like Pauline’s, which are fairly common in battle. I have spoken with them at length, and have the utmost confidence in them.”

  “Well, of course!” Vicky smiled. “Nothing but the best for the emperor and his family. They were both trained at Heidelberg—some of the best surgeons anywhere.”

  “So now we wait.”

  “Indeed. But I also have a son who lies broken. My Willy has suffered a great shock. I would be comforted if you would accompany me to the Hohenzollern II.”

  “I would be happy to go with you. The visit will probably do him good. I rather imagine he has some things he will want to say to you. And to his brother.”

  ~*~*~*~*~

  Coffee and pastry lay untouched on the side table at Kaiser Wilhelm’s elbow as he semi-reclined in an easy chair. He was pale and drawn, a shawl draped around his shoulders despite the pleasant summer morning. To his mother, he appeared to have aged twenty years in the last twenty hours.

  He struggled to stand as she was shown into the drawing room, but she motioned him to sit, pulled up a stool in front of him, and took his hands in hers. She searched his eyes.

  “Tell me, Willy.”

  He returned her gaze, and tears ran down his cheeks. “Mamma, I am much changed.”

  She nodded and wiped his tears with her kerchief. “And will you recover?”

  “Recover? Yes, I expect so. But I devoutly hope that I will never again be the same man. I understand . . . so much . . .” Belatedly, he noticed Lakshmi standing just inside the door, and again attempted to stand, but she hurried to him and knelt at his mother’s side, placing her hands atop his and Vicky’s.

  “Frau Doctor Malieux, please accept my humblest apologies for the part I played in your kidnapping and detention.”

  Lakshmi smiled, bowed her head, and patted his hands.

  “Mamma, I have made a great many mistakes since my reign began.”

  “How so?”

  “I have wandered from the values I learned at your and Pappa’s knees. You taught me true humanitarian concern and a duty to serve the greatest good of the greatest number of the German people. I became convinced that my glory was the German people’s glory. You taught me the value of democracy and religious and ethnic tolerance, and the militarists taught me that conquest must be my highest aim.”

  Vicky nodded sadly. “So, you sought to widen Germany’s rule, to give it what you called its ‘place in the sun.’ ”

  Wilhelm sighed. “I have spent millions on the engines of war, on armies and navies, while the poor have languished and the people have been taxed beyond endurance, to pay for the latest gadgetry of destruction.”

  “That is a deadly spiral.”

  “Yes it is. I became obsessed with ultimate control. I even allowed myself to be convinced that Diamond Jubal provided the key to the control of other people’s minds. Yet even now, when I do not fully understand what that blue flash did to me, I do know it has not put me under anyone’s control.”

  “Diamond Jubal is merely a tuner,” said Lakshmi. “It tunes a person’s brain waves to be in sync with the first person they encounter after they’ve been flashed. For most people who experience this ‘at-one-ment,’ ‘love’ is the only word that describes how they feel, so that is the way they behave. Suddenly, they truly understand another person. For most, it is the first time in their lives. It’s a very attractive, exalting feeling.”

  “But I was not exposed to anyone.”

  “Ah, but you were. You experienced the most profound atonement of them all: you became one with yourself. We deliberately left you alone in a blacked-out room. You awoke with no one, nothing else to focus on but yourself. That is why the pain has been so exquisite—your higher nature warred with your baser nature. In a lesser man, it might have destroyed your mind. But you are strong. You struggled and persevered. Your higher nature won out.”

  “What of Malieux and Shaka? They got the same jolt as did I.”

  Lakshmi turned to the door and beckoned. Shaka ducked through, pushing a wheeled chair. In it sagged the husk of the man who had been Oberon Malieux. His eyes were open, but unfocused. His mouth, too, lolled open. Down his face coursed a thin rivulet of drool, which Lakshmi stood and wiped away with the hem of her sari.

  “Oberon was once a great man, a genius humanitarian, and had the potential to be even greater. But he surrendered to avarice, greed, and the lust for power. He allowed his base instincts to prevail, and his behavior to become so far out of sync with his better nature that the effort to harmonize them was too much. The struggle cost him his sanity.”

  “What will happen to him now?”

  “He is, for better or worse, still my husband, and I cannot abandon him. I will care for him and pray that a merciful universe will grant him eventual healing, though I have no great hopes.”

  “Your husband is destroyed, catatonic. I am debilitated, drained of all vitality—temporarily, I hope, but drained. Yet here stands Shaka, apparently unaffected. How is this so? Shaka, what has happened to you? What will become of you?”

  Shaka paused and seemed to consider. He shrugged apologetically. “I will return to my homeland, to find my family. To see what is left of my people, and how I can be of service to them. I must try to make up for all these lost years.”

  “Shaka is modest,” Lakshmi interjected. “He already knew who he was, and his behavior, to the extent his slavery gave him choices, was in keeping with his values. Even before he blasted you—and himself—with Jubal’s diamond light, this was his plan. Am I correct, Shaka?”

  He nodded. “Yes, Doctor.”

  “And even before that,” she continued, “it was his choice to warn the young ladies and gentlemen of Malieux’s attack. It was his choice, after the battle, to pick up Winston’s tank and set it down on his own legs. He pinned himself in place so that he could still be privy to Malieux’s plans, then tore the tank to pieces so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Correct, Shaka?”

  Again he nodded.

  “Finally, when Oberon brought me here for your attempt at persuasion, Highness, Shaka saw evil that he could not abide. There was an opportunity, and he chose to act, even at the risk of destroying his own mind along with yours and Malieux’s. Of the three of you, he is the least affected because he was already the most true to himself. He is the actual agent of change. I merely built the tool.”

  Shaka shifted from foot to foot, clearly embarrassed by the attention. “If I might, Doctor, your husband would probably be more comfortable in your cabin aboard Ganesh.”

  “Indeed he would, my Friend. Thank you!”

  Shaka withdrew, wheeling the catatonic Oberon ahead of him.

  “You give yourself too little credit, my dear,” put in Vicky. “Conceiving such a harmonizer is a stroke of scientific genius, not to mention the engineering genius to build it.”

  “It didn’t happen all at once. It came out of my work repairing eyes—the function you saw demonstrated with Robin Starveling.”

  “How does it do that?”

  “It’s complicated, but in its essence, it reminds the cells of the eye of their true nature. It seems that through age, and sometimes disease, they forget. But once they are harmonized, they reject the accumulated changes and return to their proper function, just as Wilhelm’s brain has done. Replacing the rubies with diamonds allows the device to reach through the eyes, down the neural pathways into the brain.”

  “Can’t that be used to heal other damage? Like Snout’s and Snug’s wounds, and Pauline’s legs?” Vicky asked hopefully.

  “Perhaps someday, when we have developed ways of gathering, storing, and delivering much higher energies. Only recently, my friend, Doctor Röntgen, has found frequencies of light that pass all the way through the human bod
y. ‘X-rays,’ they’re called. But for now, we cannot affect cells any deeper than the diamond and ruby light can reach. So the surface cells could be reminded of their proper functions. Brain cells could be affected down the neural pathways. But not the bones and the deep muscles.”

  Vicky shook her head. “It is a marvelous age of science and technology we live in, is it not?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  “These Friends of yours—how do they fit in?”

  On Lakshmi’s shoulder, Cobweb chirped, and Lakshmi chuckled.

  “She says, ‘Very well, thank you!’ ”

  “A cricket who plays word games. It is indeed a marvelous age,” Vicky said.

  “The Friends have been exposed to both ruby and diamond blasts, full strength, from the full-sized apparatus—not the portable ‘Diamond Jubal’ version—powered by the steam engine in my laboratory. Their bodies are brought to their full potential, as are their minds. They live longer, are much stronger, and fly farther and faster than they could before they were transformed.”

  “What made you think to even try it?”

  “Oh, I didn’t! It was an entirely accidental discovery. Cobweb here was present in the lab for one of the first tests of the apparatus.”

  Cobweb sang and Lakshmi translated. “She says, ‘It was quite a shock, let me tell you, when a flash of blue diamond light brought me to consciousness without preparation or warning.’ ”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “I skulked about the laboratory for several days, trying to make sense of the world, and trying not to get stepped on or eaten by the cat. Then a flash of ruby light fortified my body, and I was bold enough to start trying to communicate with the doctor.’ ”

  “She could have talked to me earlier, and I’d have understood and protected her,” interjected Lakshmi. “Those must have been terrifying days.”

  Cobweb’s prolonged, earsplitting trill needed no translation.